1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a purchase information collecting method and purchase information collecting apparatus for collecting information about purchased commodity and its purchaser using a network, and to a purchase information collecting program for making a computer connected with a network to perform the purchase information collecting method. The present disclosure also relates to subject matter contained in Japanese Patent application No. 2001-103022 (filed on Apr. 2, 2001) and Japanese Patent application No. 2001-273285 (filed on Sep. 10, 2001), which are expressly incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are some retailers that collect, in order to have a better understanding of customers' needs and behavior, purchase information consisting of information on sold commodity and personal information on customer purchased the commodity in the following way.
The retailers ask their customers to gain a membership which entitles one to buy commodity at reduced price by submitting his or her personal information (name, address, age, occupation, etc.). When a customer submits his or her personal information to such a retailer, the retailer gives a membership card (magnetic card or IC card) recording unique member number, and stores the submitted personal information in a member database as information related to the member number. The retailer, when selling one or more commodities to a member (customer having the membership card), asks the member to show his (or her) membership card. The retailer, when selling commodity to a member, reads the member number from the membership card and then stores information about the purchased commodities as information associated with the read member number, thereby obtaining purchase information.
Purchase information is useful for all sorts of companies, since the better understanding of purchasers' needs and behavior enables company to minimize under- or overstocking, or to conduct to each customer an customized advertising (direct-mail advertising and the likes).
The companies such as manufactures or wholesalers, however, cannot collect purchase information in the method above, because they have no opportunity of contacting the purchasers directly. Therefore, these companies adopt different methods for collecting purchase information.
For example, some manufacturers that make expendables such as foods or office supplies collect purchase information by asking purchasers to send a postal matter (application postcard or letter) containing an evidence that one or more commodities are purchased (for instance, application seal affixed on commodity, portion of wrapping where the bar code is printed) and personal information using a gift or better after-sales service as an incentive to make purchaser to send the postal matter. Furthermore, some manufactures that makes commodities such as electric products, software product, etc. collect purchase information by web page to which purchaser can input the identifier assigned to the purchased commodity (product ID, serial number) and his or her personal information also using a gift or better after-sales service as an incentive.
The former method is inferior to the above-mentioned method adopted by retailers in the point that enough amount of purchase information to perform accurate trend analysis cannot be collected, because purchaser who considers the work required to send the above-mentioned postal matter (for instance, the work to prepare the demanded evidence, stick the evidence on an application form, fill in the application form with personal information, and put the application form in a mailbox) is worth doing for the incentive never sends the postal matter.
On the other hands, use of the latter method allows a company to collect purchase information about most of sold commodities, because filling in data to the web page can be done more easily than sending postal matter. However, to collect accurate purchase information with using this method, companies must assign identifier which is not easily forged to each commodity but not to each kind of commodity, because, if such identifier is not assigned to each commodity, company cannot obtain see trough frauds to get the incentives, and therefore the company cannot collect reliable purchase information.
Accordingly, the objects of the present invention are to provide a collecting purchase information method and a collecting purchase information apparatus capable of collecting reliable purchase information about any kind of commodity using a network, and to provide a purchase information collecting program which is able to make a computer connected with a network to function as the server apparatus for performing the purchase information collecting method.